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Spanish
Language Films
BROWSE SPANISH FILMS: Contemporary Spanish films: ALPHABETICAL
INDEX - 1 -
2 - 3 - 4
- 5 - 6
- 7 | New
releases | Spanish-language film collections
| Spanish & Latin American film directors
| Spanish & Latin American actors &
actresses | Books about Spanish
language cinema
Deep Crimson / Profundo carmesí |
|
Crime / Drama (1996)
Mexico
Director: Arturo Ripstein
Starring: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Regina Orozco |
Description: Based
on the true story of the "Lonely Hearts Murders,"
renowned director Arturo Ripstein’s Deep
Crimson (Profundo
Carmesí) is an emotionally charged and profoundly
original take on serial killing. Nicolas Estrella has made a meager
living seducing and then stealing from lonely, often widowed,
women he meets through the personal ads in local newspapers. While
trying to victimize Coral, a hefty, half-mad nurse obsessed with
Estrella’s movie star looks, Nicolas can’t help falling
in love with her merciless enthusiasm for his seedy lifestyle.
Together, the pair roam the back roads of Mexico looking for lonely
women who Nicolas seduces and the insanely jealous Coral then
murders. These lovers turned assassins feed on the misery of others
with each murder binding them together all the more closely until
a pitiful confession from Nicolas prompts the pair’s fitting
demise.
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Freedomfighters / Libertarias |
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Drama / War (1996)
Spain
Director: Vicente Aranda
Starring: Ana Belén, Victoria Abril
|
Description: Spain, July 19,
1936. The War has just begun and women as always play their part
in this human tragedy. Maria, an innocent young nun, is forced
to leave the convent after the arrival of the revolutionary troops
in Barcelona. She takes refuge in a brothel, where she meets a
group of "Libertarias",
who are being "drafted" for the "Free Women"
organization under the leadership of Pilar (Ana Belen) a pure
feminist warrior, passionate and fiery. Alongside, Charo (Loles
Leon) the hooker with the heart of gold and Floren (Victoria Abril)
a spiritualist, Maria joins in. Within the brutal realities of
war, Maria experiences love with an unexpected character and companionship
through those she is fighting with. Libertarias is an epic of
six women fight for freedom, their struggle for justice amid their
passionate cry for a better world. One of Spain’s best known
directors, Vicente Aranda, Winner at the Tokyo International Film
Festival, has made 17 previous films including the internationally
acclaimed Amantes.
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Thesis / Tesis |
|
Drama / Horror (1996)
Spain
Director: Alejandro Amenábar
Starring: Ana Torrent, Fele Martínez
|
Review: Spanish
director Alejandro Amenábar grabbed the attention of American
audiences with his dreamy thriller Open
Your Eyes, but he earlier sent shock waves throughout
Spain in 1996 with this disturbing debut. Thesis
is a quietly creepy psychological thriller about a young college
student, Ángela (Ana Torrent) investigating the social
fascination with sensational violence for her thesis project.
In her search for violent video footage, she stumbles onto what
may be a real live snuff film, a videotape that her professor
was watching before his untimely death. With the help of a geeky
gore junkie she uncovers a conspiracy that may include her handsome
but sinister new boyfriend, her thesis advisor, and even her weirdo
partner. When she uncovers one too many secrets lying in the catacombs
of the university basement, she realizes that she may be the next
victim. It goes on perhaps too long, and Amenábar's pointed
observations on the lure of violence and the dark side of human
nature are lost as the spiraling mystery spins into a first-person
nightmare, but his skill at weaving a paranoid world where evil
may lurk behind every friendly face is undeniable. Thesis
is reminiscent of Brian De Palma's early thrillers: dark, stylish,
subdued, and bubbling with the characters' guilty (and ultimately
dangerous) fascination with the transgressive.
Review by Sean Axmaker
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Land / Tierra |
|
Drama / Romance (1996)
Spain
Director: Julio Medem
Starring: Carmelo Gómez, Emma Suárez
|
Review: Julio Medem doesn't
direct his films so much as weave them: images, characters, criss-crossing
stories, and recurring motifs intertwine, blur, and transform
through time. Tierra
begins in the heavens and plummets to Earth, the camera rushing
through space down to the red dust of a remote wine-growing region
in Spain. Ángel (Carmelo Gómez) attempts to find
grounding in his work (he's been hired to fumigate the area, which
has been infested by wood lice) but finds his wandering soul torn
in two directions. Initially attracted to the lovely, lonely,
ethereal Ángela (Emma Suárez), he finds himself
drawn against his better nature--in the form of a guardian angel,
a phantom double that watches over him like an aggressive but
well-meaning conscience--to the earthy, passionate, impulsive
Mari (Silke). Medem sets his tale of love and lust amidst the
stunning, austere landscape of fiery red hills, a world both primal
and alien (dressed in white protective suits, the fumigators look
like astronauts on Mars). Like his earlier film The
Red Squirrel (which also starred Gómez and Suárez),
Medem winds multiple stories together with natural history and
philosophical musings until it all melts together in a lovely
and unexpected conclusion. Medem crafts an equally dense story
in his acclaimed follow-up film, The
Lovers of the Arctic Circle, but where that film leapt
into the emotional world of tragic melodrama, Tierra
transforms "wrong" choices into revealing insights about
the beautiful contradictions of human nature.
Review by Sean Axmaker
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Mouth to Mouth / Boca a boca |
|
Comedy (1996)
Spain
Director: Manuel Gómez Pereira
Starring: Javier Bardem, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón |
Description: Critics everywhere
can't stop talking about this outrageously sexy comedy treat!
To make ends meet, a struggling actor (Academy Award(R)-nominee
Javier Bardem -- Best Actor, Before
Night Falls, 2000) reluctantly takes the only "acting"
job he can find ... as a phone sex operator! But the real fun
begins when he falls for a sultry, mysterious caller who wants
to do more than just talk -- setting in motion a hilariously madcap,
sexy adventure! Prepare yourself for nonstop laughs and unforgettable
fun.
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Not Love, Just Frenzy / Más que amor, frenesí |
|
Comedy / Drama (1996)
Spain
Director: Alfonso Albacete, Miguel Bardem
Starring: Nancho Novo, Cayetana Guillén Cuervo
|
Description: Not
Love Just Frenzy is a fast and funny adventure through
the wild Euro club scene in the style of the scandalous Pedro
Almodovar! A group of hot and horny twentysomething friends looking
for love at Madrid's hottest disco get tangled up in a maze of
wild sex, drugs and gunfights as they encounter flashy drag queens,
self-absorbed gigolos and a whole host of other outrageous characters.
Accompanied by a dynamite soundtrack and starring many of Spain's
top young actors, including appearances by Penelope Cruz (Vanilla
Sky), Javier Bardem (Before
Night Falls) and Bibi Andersen (Kika)
as a high-class lesbian pimp, Not
Love Just Frenzy is too hip to miss.
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Guantanamera |
|
Comedy / Drama (1995)
Cuba / Spain
Director: Juan Carlos Tabío, Tomás Gutiérrez
Alea
Starring: Carlos Cruz, Mirta Ibarra |
From the Cuban directors of Strawberry
and Chocolate (Tomás Gutiérrez and Juan
Carlos Tabio) comes a poignant romantic comedy with satiric bite.
Yoyita is a famous singer who returns to the town of Guantanamo
for a celebration in her honor. Reunited with her girlhood lover
Candido after 50 years, she dies in his arms from overstimulation.
The farce of returning her body to Havana for proper burial provides
the vehicle for an easygoing yet incisive overview of contemporary
Cuba and a lighthearted admonishment to live for the moment. Yoyita's
niece Gina, who is a former professor of economics, and her tyrannical
husband, who is the official undertaker for the remote province,
make up the procession, along with the forlorn Candido. As the
cortege makes its way toward the capital, Gina is given a second
chance at love with a hunky truck driver while we become privy
to the clandestine restaurants, abject road stops, and endless
slogans that populate the hitherto underexposed Cuban countryside.
Review by Fionn Meade
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Midaq Alley / El callejón de los milagros
|
|
Drama (1995)
Mexico
Director: Jorge Fons
Starring: Ernesto Gómez Cruz, María Rojo |
Synopsis: With humor, pain and
love for mankind, the film tells the story of three neighbors
whose lives are intertwined. Rutiloio, the family man with homosexual
feelings; Susanita, who dreams of getting married but falls prey
to a thief; and Alma (Salma Hayek), a virgin who becomes a cocaine
snorting prostitute.
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Flamenco |
|
Music (1995)
Spain
Director: Carlos Saura
Starring: La Paquera de Jerez, Merche Esmeralda |
Synopsis: Exploring the sensuous
delights and dark mysteries of life by uniting music , song, and
dance, Flamenco
is one of the purest and most stunning performance films ever
made. With an exceptional history that reaches back nearly five
hundred years, the magnificent art of Flamenco music and dancing
has long been an integral part of the Spanish heart and culture.
Joining 300 of the world's greatest Flamenco performers with master
cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse
Now, The
Last Emperor), director Carlos Saura has magnificently
transferred the beauty and power of Flamenco to the screen. The
result is an unbroken series of electrifying numbers that range
in emotion from heartbreak to elation and that shimmer with sexual
energy while reaching a thrilling level of virtuosity.
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Flower of My Secret / La Flor de mi secreto
|
|
Drama (1995)
Spain
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Marisa Paredes, Juan Echanove |
Review: Pedro Alomodóvar
made this misfired, rambling comedy about a romance novelist (Marisa
Paredes) whose crumbling marriage has left her depressed and unable
to work. At a low point, she writes a scathing indictment of her
own books (which are penned under another name), with no one realizing
critic and author are one and the same. Almodóvar (Law
of Desire) has the start of a great idea here, and for once,
he's direct about his sympathy for a character. But nothing else
about The
Flower of My Secret is so clear. Despite its unusual allegiance
to the straightforward "women's films" of the 1950s,
this movie blows it by becoming needlessly complicated over extraneous
junk, forcing one to grope in the dark for Almodóvar's
point.
Review by Tom Keogh
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Strawberry & Chocolate / Fresa y chocolate
|
|
Drama / Comedy (1994)
Cuba
Starring: Jorge Perugorría,
Vladimir Cruz
Directors: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea,
Juan Carlos Tabío |
Review: This charming Cuban
film details the unusual relationship between the flamboyant,
educated Diego (Jorge Perugorría) and the young, homophobic,
pro-Revolution David (Vladimir Cruz). Miserable at being dumped
by his girlfriend, David at first spurns the attentions of Diego;
however, at the prompting of his Communist roommate, Miguel (Francisco
Gattorno), he cultivates an acquaintanceship with Diego in order
to investigate his liberal leanings. Of course, Diego's cultured
ways prove fascinating to the younger man and a true friendship
grows. Add the slightly crazy neighbor Nancy (Mirta Ibarra), who
frequently attempts suicide, as romantic fodder for David, and
this playful drama becomes a heartwarming film. Disputed in its
own country, this film was the first Cuban picture to be nominated
for best foreign picture at the Academy Awards.
Review by Jenny Brown
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